BT 'UK's most powerful Wi-Fi'? Why, fie, for shame! – ads watchdog BT has been ticked off for running a campaign claiming to have the UK's "most powerful" broadband, almost two years after it was hauled before the ad industry watchdog over the same issue. Back in June 2017, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rapped the former state monopoly on the knuckles for "misleading" and " …
Since they obviously aren't using the technical meaning of the word 'power', one has to wonder what meaning they are attributing to the word. Does it emit the most Orgone energy? The most 'powerful' crystal healing field? Has it been treated with the most homoeopathically diluted 'wi-fi'? Or maybe they are suggesting that their routers are sexually powerful, and make the strongest lovers?
I dispute this claim, at one point we used a 500mW wifi module into an antenna with 16dBi gain, but then we had a "Notice of Variation" issued by OFCOM and they specified what SSID was to be used. This was for short term use, not in a built up area BTW.
Isn't it a limit of the ERP rather than the power? Came across this with upgrading routers with after market antennas.
Having been involved with city wide wifi for a short while, there were benefits in boosting the signal power on the mesh channel on both access points to obtain a higher bandwidth on the mesh traffic.
Doing the same for the access channel results in lots of people thinking they should be able to connect to this good signal, but the AP cant hear them reliably enough. Drains battery of devices constantly sending repeat packets that are never acknowledged, or worse, thinking it has a connection, so doesn't use your telco GSM, but is not reliable enough for real use.
"Of course, BT could always be telling the truth and exceeding the 100mW @ 2.4GHz legal limit; in which case, they also lose."
Disclaimer: I hate BT with a passion and will happily discourage anyone from using their services.
BT aren't doing anything illegal AFAIK, just providing better equipment:
-. 3x3n/4x4ac radios with beam forming when their competitors are using 2x2n/3x3ac radios.
- better antenna designs than their competitors
- CPU/memory capable of supporting the router/wifi functions without overheating or experiencing performance bottlenecks
- software that allows most functions to work as designed
TL;DR: unlike their competitors, BT's HomeHub software and hardware was not complete shit.
The details of the tests are here if you want to compare this for yourself:
https://img01.products.bt.co.uk/content/dam/bt/storefront/pdfs/SmartHub2Claims.pdf
Effectively, BT were PROBABLY right with their claim to have "the most powerful wifi of major broadband providers" based on the testing results, however BT's test did not cover all forms of interference (I'm guessing DECT phones as the likely options that have been missed - the other causes such as microwave ovens, dodgy baby monitors, electrical cabling issues etc are faults that should really be addressed). The ASA's statement isn't clear on the reason which makes it hard to disprove:
"We noted BT had tested for both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth interference. However, there were other forms of non-Wi-Fi interference common in many households beyond Bluetooth for which BT had not tested."
The thing that annoys me most about the ruling is that almost any Virgin Superhub user will tell you that anything is better than a Superhub (see Intel SoC issues, known crap software, inferior wifi hardware, Virgin support).
You're still using the vendor provided CPE
Its all terible with terible GUIs and security
BTs claim is based on false assumptions and awful testing
Firstly, Non-WiFi Interference is only really an issue in 2.4GHz, and 5GHz band has more available channels and supports ac speeds, which is why the devices they tested with Prefer 5GHz.
Secondly the major use of WiFi is not transfer between machines on the (W)LAN but to/from the internet. At which point the best IP throughput has to go to the virgin SH2AC , as everyone else is limited to the VDSL2 max of 80 Mbps unless you are lucky enough to be in a g.fast area.
Also the Test house they are using , there is no way the router would be in room A, with the way OR connects lines its far more likley to be in room B, and struggle to reach room A
- "You're still using the vendor provided CPE"
Which is a reasonable assumption for the majority of major broadband providers users. i.e. a single wifi router close to the front of the house to connect to the BT master socket or Virgin cable entry point. This setup will account for >>50% of the ~25m fixed broadband households in the UK.
- "Firstly, Non-WiFi Interference is only really an issue in 2.4GHz, and 5GHz band has more available channels and supports ac speeds, which is why the devices they tested with Prefer 5GHz."
There's no disputing the interference issue being predominantly a 2.4GHz issue. BT tested both 2.4GHz and 5GHz in their test house. Virgin were the ones that raised non-wifi/BT interference as a major issue with BT's claims and the ASA accepted the claims based on unspecified interference.
- "Secondly the major use of WiFi is not transfer between machines on the (W)LAN but to/from the internet. At which point the best IP throughput has to go to the virgin SH2AC , as everyone else is limited to the VDSL2 max of 80 Mbps unless you are lucky enough to be in a g.fast area."
To me, the test results BT provides indicate that they are testing what the client is able to receive. In most environments where there are 4 or more rooms, this will likely to be lower than 80Mbps. Almost all of the results BT's tests in room C/D fall below this threshold.
Agree. Stuck with Virgin at home, as they do genuinely have the fastest, lowest contention connections, but I just put their shuperslub into modem mode and used my own SOHO firewall, 10GbE switching, 6x6ac APs etc.
It still disconnects for 5 or 10 minutes roughly every week in total, but the rest of the time it's pretty good. Compared to how it is using the SH3 as they installed... that was a pile of doggy doo-doo. I had to go back to that mode when the builders were in in December - I'm not risking my expensive gear in the same room as someone with a Hilti and a sledgehammer.
Many years ago was trying to buy a cordless drill to in the USA and had a chat with the sales associate. He said I should ignore the claims made by one manufacturer about being the most powerful. I asked why and he said it just meant it had the highest capacity battery. There was very little difference between the two in terms of output.
This also make me think of Dyson and their "zero carbon emissions" claim. http://www.eevblog.com/2010/12/13/eevblog-132-delusional-dyson-marketing/
That's an amazing claim.....well it is.......but for a specific definition of carbon emissions.
They could be the most powerful by being equally as powerful as everyone else. If they are all the same then they are all the most powerful, and the weakest.
I binned (well it's actually in the "I'll take that apart and see if I can do anything with it" pile) the smart hub and replaced it with a decent third party one. Wifi all over the house improved, I'm seeing a roughly 10% broadband speed improvement and I get all the niceness of having a proper router with all the functions and stuff that BT turn off.
A quango with no built in test equipment is par for the course.
However, on an extremely pedantic note, we have a watchdog. He doesn't bite, he barks at strange sounds and things that shouldn't be where they are. I really wouldn't want him biting. The ASA is, actually, a watchdog and not a terrible one. Look at the garbage that gets through in the US, where "truth in advertising" is merely an aspiration.
What we need for both advertising standards and data security is a guard dog. One with big teeth.
we have a watchdog. He doesn't bite, he barks at strange sounds
We have one of those too. Mind you, at 15, he's getting a bit deaf and his eyesight isn't what it used to be (and he now limps on his front right shoulder) so he sometimes barks at stuff he thought he saw and sometimes chases one of our cats because he didn't see them clearly enough.
But at least he doesn't pee in the house like our last elderly dogs did (I'm dreading replacing the hall carpet - might need to replace some of the floorboards underneath to get rid of the consequences..)
Isn't that because the IP allocation is done away from the hub itself? I believe that there is a fix for that available and that you can usually sort out the time it takes to connect all sub devices by creating a manual configuration for DHCP IP address allocation in the hub configuration.
Not sure what your on about, "away from the router".
Their router works just like all other "Routers". No LAN DHCP assignments are cloud-based. If you mean the WAN IP assignment, it might be "Farther" away, but that doesn't really matter nor can you used "fixed" ip settings for that.
Have to disagree. I've no major love for Sky as a company, but I do get a solid and reliable 45Mb from them, despite being in a small village in northern Scotland. Their routers could be better mind you. However, I've suffered at BT's customer dis-service a good few years back, so unless their kit dispenses complimentary bank-notes, they can shove their "Powerful WiFi" where the sun don't shine*.
* And I'm not talking about Scotland again!
length of string is faster than Sky "Broadband".
I suspect that, were I to lower my standards sufficiently to buy broadband from Sky I would get a really, really good connection. I ought to anyway (absent throttling/BW sharing) since there's a Sky fibre cab on the pavement about 4 metres from my house. (elderly dogs favourite 'start of walk' pee spot - I really hope that their cab designers have 'dog pee proof' as part of their design spec..)
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As with any story involving the ASA, the problem is by the time they've received a complaint, reviewed the evidence and issued their stern talking to and slapped wrist, the ad has been running for 6 months. BT presumably think it's worth risking some ear ache and a mild sting.
I notice they don't claim reliable broadband. That really would be a lie.
Much as I hate the idea of defending them the ability to get internet access through other BT customers routers at no extra cost does give them an edge. Albeit you have to blur the definitions of range and coverage a bit and the swap-over between access points is not quite as seamless as adverts suggest, but hey that's marketing for you. The other thing and I am surprised BT does not push this is "power" of security. Ever since the debacle where black-hats completely reversed the v2 HomeHubs and published the keygen online BT did raise its game significantly. It takes your typical script kiddie neighbour what.. 3 weeks to brute force a SKY or TalkTalk router compared to modern BT router taking significantly longer.
"It takes your typical script kiddie neighbour what.. 3 weeks to brute force a SKY or TalkTalk router compared to modern BT router taking significantly longer."
Assuming the wifi uses preshared keys and the person trying is determined, the differences between hacking them is tiny if it is actively being used:
https://gbhackers.com/crack-wifi-network-passwords/
While BT saying "our wifi passwords aren't as weak as our competitors" is an option, I'm not sure it's a claim you want to advertise.
Virgin recently tried to upsell me from their "upto" 200Mb product, onto their "upto" 300Mb one. Since the actual speed has been sitting firmly at 80Mb since I moved into the house almost 3 years ago, I don't think I'm going to pay them any more. (They don't offer a product lower then 200Mb here, sadly. So I'm stuck paying full price for 40% of the "upto" speed)
YMMV; my 'up-to 100MB' with Virgin gives around 105MB every time I've bothered to speed-test it. Better than the appalling ADSL offering I used to get from Talk Talk that used to drop down to sub 2MB for prolonged periods for no apparent reason, and customer service that consists of having to argue with someone in India for 20 minutes before they concede that they have wrongly billed you for £50 to fix a problem at the frikkin' exchange...
I think the real problem is that all major telco / broadband providers seem to have appalling customer service. I wouldn't touch BT again after the Phorm debacle, and ditto Talk Talk for their open-door policy towards customer data. Sky can piss off as long as any of their money goes in Rupert Murdoch's pockets. Others (such as Vodafone) are just BT resellers with the added advantage of buck-passing when you need a problem fixed...
Have you by any chance glanced at VM's Ts & Cs?
A couple of years ago I nearly subscribed to their broadband service, without particularly thinking about the small print. A few days before the service was due to go live they sent me a couple of forms together with copies of the Ts & Cs.
I read them with growing incredulity and with the hair beginning to rise up on the back of my neck. Essentially anything I posted or received would be subject to VM's critical inspection; they could grab whatever they wanted for their own purposes; and if anyone took offence at anything I posted, VM could cut off my service immediately without even telling me why.
So I cancelled the VM arrangement, did some research, and went with Andrews & Arnold.
You think you've got it bad? I live in the US, you know, the land where everyone's a multigazilliomaire and we have the best of everything because we're so great? I pay 100 a month for 9MB up and 4MB down over a microwave link. The main pluses: I actually see these speeds, and my provider acts as a utility and not a content provider. I can use 100 percent of my bandwidth 24x7 if I want, no slowdowns or data limits. 150MBPS? I'd have to order a dedicated circuit for about 10,000 dollars a month if I wanted speed like that, because I live more than 5 feet from a major metropolitan area. Or, trust one of the providers like Cox to actually provide the speed I was buying and not "up to" which covers everything between 1 bit and the advertised speed.
The whole WiFi marketing campaign has been blown out of all proportion, and truth lies buried far beneath the rubble.
Obviously the practical effectiveness of WiFi inside a building depends mainly on the number of walls and other obstacles, and the materials of which they are built.
In a flimsy house with interior walls made of wood or other light materials, WiFi can propagate fairly well. Likewise inside an office building with thin partitions. But if the internal walls are made of thick brick, stone or breezeblock, it's a different matter. Steel beams and girders, or even an unfortunately placed mirror can cause problems.
For many years now manufacturers have ignored the facts and advertised their WiFi products as capable of working well everywhere. That simply isn't true (and can't be if the the current law is respected).
I spent a lot of time struggling to get WiFi to work properly. Eventually I gave up and adopted mains powerline networking instead; I find it works perfectly. Moreover it's a lot more secure (not that I have much anyone would want to steal).
I'd agree with you that power line Ethernet works better than the vendor supplied WiFi in pretty much any house with an internal brick wall, but don't imagine that the signal is neatly contained in the copper wire. Power line setups splurge HF signal in all directions, probably propagating even farther than the WiFi. I've even heard stories of leakage of domestic traffic from neighboring lampposts.
It only works well if it's on the same loop.
If the signal has to go back through the breaker box, then you can kiss any connectivity goodbye.
I have wired ethernet between rooms now, but it used to be that I tried a home-plug to reach a wifi dead-zone, with less success - the signal couldn't get from downstairs to upstairs, though it could cross from one side of the lounge to the other just fine.
I have to wonder at how often people depend unnecessarily on wi-fi. Though most ISPs (not all, happily) aren't any help, pushing wi-fi in the most unnecessary circumstances.
Like many people I have several devices, so I need wi-fi.
But I have not one but two elderly neighbours with single computers just feet away from a wi-fi router. Neither ever move their machines (one desktop, one laptop) nor desire any more devices in their houses, and very happy to have me plug in an ethernet cable, switch off the wifi, and remove at least one complication from their lives.
With modern housebuilding techniques, as a colleague recently discovered, what used to be a stud and plasterboard wall is now stud and plasterboard around a foiled foam core of e.g. Kingspan, with a mylar vapour barrier tacked across it all for good measure. As soon as you put an earthed copper pipe through it, you get an instant RF impermeable wall. Or at least heavily attenuated in the interesting and useful wavelengths.
Powerline is the way to go for anyone not savvy enough to have specc'd a bit of Cat6A running between the various compartments of the house.
The whole WiFi marketing campaign has been blown out of all proportion
Say it ain't so! Marketing blowing stuff out of proportion? Not being truthful? I just can't believe it!
flimsy house with interior walls made of wood or other light materials, WiFi can propagate fairly well
Although copper pipes and electrical cabling can disrupt that quite badly. Which is why I ended up doing a mini-mesh using Ubuiqti APs - it was the only reliable way of getting decent wifi bandwidth over to the right side of the house.
And if you think that getting it to work in a modern house, just try to get it working in a historic building or castle. I believe the word 'no' was mentioned a lot in that conversation..
(Along with 'yes, we can do it, but only with an AP in every room, however small. And this is how much that it's going to cost... Why have you gone green?)
I have had enough bad experiences (slowness, disconnects, crap configurability, woeful firewall) with ISP-issued routers (mostly Virgin Media) to know not to trust the damn things - they all go straight in modem mode to be replaced by more reliable kit. Currently a pair of Ubiquiti APs and Edgerouter do the lifting, but thinking of putting something together with PfSense for routing / firewall duties.
Power Limits aside, there are some design considerations that allow for "better" transmission. How these things are tested and rated when it comes to giving that bit of consumer information is probably based on who is testing it and what they want the results to show.
I am hoping someone will bring VM up on their current "advertising" that states that their packages are based on the number of devices you connect. I asked the sales team to not repeat it to me again that the package I was on was not good because of the number of devices I had (tho, he couldnt tell how many I had as I refused to give him the info). But to say that you count your devices to pick your package... That's just wrong.
Wi-fi coverage is double-edged sword.
Especially given a combination of an ISP (BT isn't the only offender) who teaches customers wi-fi coverage is all that matters, and customers daft enough to believe them.
The result? Routers that can cover half a street, annoying neighbours. My own next-door neighbour recently installed BT broadband and in half my house and all of my garden his totally excessive wi-fi signal (of which he's intensely proud) blankets my own.
Change channels? Also difficult as BT now have half a dozen phon hotspots in a short rural road. Hotspots of no practical use (in sheer number at least) given the rural area and the fact they blanket half the 2.4 band. I spend half my life repositioning my otherwise perfectly adequate router, and changing channels to overlap as few others as possible.
More to responsible internet provision than seeing who can piss the highest.
I always find the adverts for BT Hubs amusing because of the three Hubs I've had the pleasure of using, the Hub X being my own - none of them have managed to not drop out and reset on a daily basis in three separate households. I'd say the Hub X is the better one but I think that's probably due to a firmware update being sneaked on to it; it used to crash just as much as the previous models. That or I'm just not noticing it.
Aside from the crashes, the Hub X struggles to carry stable WiFi over to other side of my small flat and it's mainly hollow plasterboard walls in-between. So it gets moved from room to room.
The speeds aren't usually terrible mind you. I can usually get the quoted 60Mbit - behind other countries but still just fine for me. There's also no usage surprises but they're also not cheap.
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